OnePlus announces OxygenOS Android ROM

OnePlus has revealed more information on its own custom Android ROM, which will be called OxygenOS.

Yesterday’s periodic table teaser from the smartphone upstart left many (including us) speculating that the company was planning to incorporate metal into the OnePlus Two.

That may well be the case, but it’s not what the teaser was about. That has become evident with today’s elaboration via a fresh company blog post.

OxygenOS is the name of OnePlus’s own custom Android ROM. The company says that its intention here was to “make the product that we ourselves would want to use,” which means “software that is open, customizable, and free of bloat and unnecessary features.”

OnePlus says that it’s adopted a similar approach to the one it took with the OnePlus One hardware. “We went back to the drawing board, creating a smartphone that offers a bold, powerful, straight-forward experience,” it says. “That’s exactly what we plan to do with our ROM.”

You might think that the OnePlus One’s Cyanogen ROM was already providing just such a thing. Why change it?

OxygenOS appears to have come about because OnePlus and CyanogenMod have had a bit of a falling out. The latter has signed an exclusivity agreement with Micromax for exclusive use in the India region, severely restricting OnePlus operations in the country.